A Moving Day

3 May 2013

Today would have been Tante Kari’s 85^th birthday.  I hope they are celebrating in heaven because there’s not much celebrating the day down here, since we all miss her so terribly.  Everytime I’m at the mall and I see the back of a head with beautiful white hair, my heart skips a beat thinking it’s Tante Kari, but a split second afterwards, I remember it can’t be.  So sad she’s gone.

It was another day not worthy of being out of doors, so I made the best of it inside.  I wrote an article for the newspaper, thankfully, as I’ve had writers block all week. The pressure mounts to produce new material.  What was I thinking when I decided to be a writer?  Someday my brain just won’t go there.

Nothing was on the calendar for today, so I was glad about that, and there’s plenty of leftovers in the frig so I knew I didn’t even have to cook a thing.  Kaleb did schoolwork all day, still sniffing, coughing and blowing his nose raw.  Kory built another shelf for the bench he made for Turid and then spent the rest of the day over at their house, building a fake beam for their ceiling where they’d done some remodeling and tore our a wall.  The ceiling has a big gap in it, and has for years, but now is the time to get that fixed.  They have their sights on selling their place one day so Kory’s the guy to get it ready.

I went to the mall just to clear my head and see if I could come up with some story ideas, and it helped, actually.  I took some funny photos, like a boat sitting at the front of the store like someone’s ship has just come in, and it was full of beer.  And another funny thing was that lying in the candy section of the store (above)  were snack packs of dried fish –as if that really is someone’s “candy.”  It is, actually, to many old folks.  

Confirmations are going on now, 17^th of May is coming up and Russ has started  - these are all three huge events in the life of any Norwegian, and the mall is full of bunads, decorations for Confirmations and high school kids running around in red overalls (below), showing they are “Russ” – seniors ready to graduate.  Russ is a crazy tradition here that lasts for about 3 weeks of non-stop parties and stupid antics that border on dangerous.  I hear them now, at midnight, out in the street honking their horns.  It’s illegal to honk a horn in Norway, so many of their stunts revolve around breaking laws and not getting caught.  Uff da.

Kaleb made a few trips to the mall today too, once I told him that Easter chocolate was marked down to about 80 cents, one third the original price.  They don’t do chocolate bunnies here, they do chickens.  Everything with Easter has to do with chickens, so they had hollow chocolate chickens with a hollow chocolate egg inside with candies inside that which are like M&Ms.  It was a bargain, so he took all the money he’d earned so far and went over and bought chickens!  He figured we’ll be here 8 weeks so he’ll have at least two a week while we are here, then he bought some to take home for his friends.  They aren’t easy to pack, however, but they sure are cute.  He was well pleased with that bargain.

Odd and Turid have been gone all week, taking a moving truck down to southern Norway to help Odd’s son, Haavard and his new wife, pack up their things and move back here.  I made some food for all of them, as I knew they’d be getting in late, and would be hungry, so I baked cookies and made some salmon dip for a late night snack.  Kory took it over to Odd’s place as he told me that Haavard would be staying over there for a few days until he got unpacked in Tante Kari’s place downstairs.  Well, once all the food was gone, here comes the moving truck right to our building.  Many hands were around to help, including ours, and they were unpacked in no time and had no intention of going over to Odd’s.  So much for that brilliant plan.  At least Turid has something to eat, but I knew Haavard’s cupboards would be empty and he’d need something… oh well. 

Haavard has been to visit us briefly in America, but I just met his new wife today.  She is a doctor that will be working with Odd, eventually taking over his practice, and Haavard is a shrink.  I told them it’s good we will now be neighbors because we need them both.  Ha.